Packing at the end of the most recent trip home, she’d tried, but it just didn’t all fit in; did I have a rollaboard she could borrow?

You can have it, I told her, or borrow, whichever works for you. I quite liked that one but it was just a little small so I hadn’t actually ever used it. The local Costco had cleared them out at all of $13; those FULs sold out in a flash.

I got a text today telling me she was sure I wouldn’t mind. She was sure this was what I would have wanted to do with it.

Oh honey yes and amen.

A single friend of hers had just found out she had breast cancer and then died a week and a half later. Her grieving family had come to collect their daughter’s things the best they could.

My daughter had given them her luggage for it. On a whim, feeling silly about it because she couldn’t see how that size would work out, she grabbed the FUL bag too in case they could use it.

It was perfect. It was exactly the thing that exactly solved a problem and they were so grateful.

They are not people of means, she told me, and this is what I could do.

I nearly cried. In pride in my child, in grief for theirs, and I thanked her for letting me help, too, without hesitation even when I didn’t know yet.

And now I know why I found and bought that bag.

The blossoms continue upwards and my sour cherry tree is dancing for joy in a hoop skirt.

Meantime, my old friends Ron and Theresa at thebuffalowoolco.com have been selling the last of their bison/silk socks. They’re my husband’s One True Sock and we stocked up when they announced the cost of silk now is ending those and when they’re gone they’re gone.

But then the mill, using up the rest of the yarn, made a few more pairs.

The catch was that they were seconds.

Ron and Theresa and crew personally went over every single pair to make sure they were okay, and they were, but seconds are seconds and they knocked a chunk off the price.

When Richard opened the package yesterday (I got him something else too because socks for your birthday is officially a That Doesn’t Count gift no matter how much he likes them) it took me about a heartbeat. And then another.

Why they were seconds.

Their socks have a little bison motif knit across the toes and that motif is color-coded by size.

The XLs were yellow.

My mediums are yellow. His are supposed to be orange. It really speeds up the sock-sorting by a lot and I’ve always thought it was a nice touch on their part.

Ron confirmed it when I asked: someone at the mill had forgotten to change that yarn during the knitting.

I told him I’d laughed, because, of all the problems in the world right now? There’s more than one way to eyeball a sock size.

And I told him that surprising us with an extra pair that was bison/merino was very generous–and brilliant. Because someday my hubby will need more socks. And now he has a way to learn in advance that their other ones are great, too. But that was so unexpected and so cool to find tucked in there.

See? Socks *can* be a real gift!

Twice, we had forgotten to get more sugar. I never run out of sugar: it’s just one of those things that’s always there.

Angel food cake time of year and–well that was brilliant. I’d already separated the dozen eggs. Hah, maybe I could…

Going next door to borrow a cup of sugar sounds so delightfully old-fashioned (and half-embarrassing to have to, just like way back when. But we don’t go shopping on the Sabbath, and that was something that was entirely understood back there back then. Maryland was the last state to let go of its Blue laws that enforced the religious concept of a day of rest on many commercial establishments–because Sunday isn’t every religion’s Sabbath. Nor is everybody religious. Equal protection under the law. No governmental establishment of religion. Totally reasonable to revoke. Done.)

The thought also always takes me straight back to–

–I don’t think I had ever actually attached the word “refugee” to her. She was just Vicky. But when your colonialist mom sews what she can of the family fortune inside the hem of her little girl’s dress right before they flee the country in order not to lose that one last bit of all that they had…

As a young woman, that little girl became a nanny to one of my dad’s artist clients, who brought her along with his family on a trip to the US. My mom was cooking dinner for twelve rather than eight and she found herself out of sugar. Knowing Mom, it was surely to bake fruit pies.

She asked Vicky to go next door to borrow a cup.

Vicky came back astonished: Madame! Your neighbors! They are Jewish!

Mom was astonished: Yes of course!   (??!)

We would never…!

I don’t know if she knew that the dad of her young charge had illustrated anti-Nazi material before France fell or that he was Jewish himself. Maybe even she was.

But what came out in their conversation was that America had been portrayed in her growing up as the most flamingly racist, bigoted country there is.

And here was an American woman astonished that anybody would be surprised at having a Jewish family next door. And not just next door. Why would anyone even think about it, people are people.

Too bad it was too early to know that the family that would later buy that house was headed by an African-American surgeon.

After making all the baking sounds in the kitchen this afternoon I said to Richard: You know how we kept forgetting to buy sugar?

The look of uh-oh on his face.

We have a melanger. The box of superfine at the back of the cabinet. We had enough.

—

(Edited to add, and the verdict is, with more than half the sugar being superfine that was the best angel food cake with the best crumb I have ever made, and I’ve made a lot of them. I wrote it down in my vintage 1952 Betty Crocker to make sure I do it that way again from here on out.)

Long long ago in a job far far away…

He was trying to remember the guy’s name. No, the one before that, what was it. I said do you really want to remember it. No not really. So anyway.

And then he told me a story I’d never heard in full before. He said it was the one where he’d really learned that you have to listen to the other guy even when they’re blatantly wrong and not just try to say what you think.

He had a boss, and this boss had a vision of what he wanted the big project to be and told his minions to get to it.

But there was a problem: that software he wanted them to create and that hardware he wanted to put it into–wouldn’t work. Would break.

This was back when what you now carry around in your phone took a whole room full of computer equipment running on hamster wheels.

Me: Was this the job where the boss was trying to break the laws of physics?

Him: No, no, that was someone else.

The guy wouldn’t listen to anybody trying to tell him anything: you have your assignments, just go do them. You heard me!

This went on for over a year.

One of Richard’s co-workers was our neighbor down the street and quietly told him that the boss had commanded him, presumably at the peril of his job, not to talk to Richard. Why? Because he knew too much and wasn’t afraid to speak up.

People on the team were frustrated and angry and all that did was make things with the boss worse. They wondered how upper management was letting this waste of the company’s resources and their time go on.

Finally, my peacemaker sweetie went Ghandhi on the guy: he quietly talked to everybody and said, Listen: as long as we keep fighting him we’re giving him a shield to hide behind for *his* boss and he can blame us. If we all stop arguing so he’s got no one to push against, maybe that will finally make the difference.

So they did.

(And here’s where I was picturing the protests I’ve seen at Tesla, where everybody is having their say on their signs while loving being in each other’s company and having a good time together.)

The guy’s boss came into town to sit down with him and hear him out on how this big project was going.

The perfect chance to expound on his lofty ideas.

His boss listened to him in disbelief: but you can’t do that with that, you have to have this first to do that and you don’t.

Me: So what happened?

Him: The guy got transferred overseas. To a job with far less authority, about as far away as they could send him from us.

The English Morello tree today: absolutely winter-bare on top, fully in bloom on bottom, gradually working its way up.

That is how I don’t have to do all the harvest work at once, but rather it’ll be one hour every morning picking and pitting and weighing and freezing. One morning per future sour cherry pie for two weeks; after that, I told Constance on Monday, I get tired of it and call friends to come pick the rest. She laughed.

Part of it though is that I want them to see that if it’s their favorite pie, too (and it usually is), if they have room to plant a bush they can grow their own pretty quickly.

So. I’d pulled the last bag out of the freezer to celebrate her. A ceramic pan for the crispiest crust.

Loaves and fishes, way in the back of the freezer where I’d checked three times I just found another bag.

You know that has got to be gone by the first of June to make room for the new. Such a problem. Not.

An old friend needed a place to crash for a night to break up an eight hour round trip and we’ve been having a great time catching up. Years ago I lined up her little kids’ books by height to look pretty for the real estate photos, thus aiding and abetting with mixed emotions her move to California’s Gold Country: happy for her, sad for me. I’m so glad we’ve kept in touch.

One of the things mentioned over dinner was that during remodeling some of the much older houses out there, the owners have found gold embedded in the walls.

Huh. Who knew. Makes sense I guess if you’re in the 1800s and want to put it where no one can find it nor steal it.

I wondered, if I say that out loud will people show up at real estate open houses there with metal detectors?

Of course if that were to become a thing, the owners themselves would give it a go.

(Never did take an updated picture.)

You know those times when you really really hope someone is as knit-worthy as you expect them to be?

I found Hayley. First, I totally threw her with the question, Are you allergic to wool?

That was so far away from anything she expected to be asked that it took her a moment to say she wasn’t.

I told her that most people hand me back my phone and say they can’t make that closed-caption app work–that she was the first person to immediately get it and not only that, that was the first time I’d ever felt fully included in any of those group out-loud chats.

She caught her breath as she almost cried.

And I wanted to express how grateful I was…

Is that a scarf?!!

An infinity scarf, yes, I tried to match your skirt from last week.

I got the biggest hug.

But then, I’d already gotten one when she did that for me.

People like her are how a knitter decides to knit for the next person like that.

Rush hour. Carpool lanes. A blood test two cities away. Sure, glad to.

He needed me to drive this time. Oh okay.

That was quickly dealt with; next was Costco. Ours? Or the one a few blocks from here? Does it have an Optical Center?

Dunno, never looked for one.

Me neither.

But we needed one. My Sibley’s Guide to the Birds is heavy enough that last night when it landed on my falling glasses, not only did the frames twist but a lens popped halfway out. I was making do with an old pair because those were pure funhouse mirror views, but at least I had backup.

He didn’t.

Surely they did–and yes, they did, just past the entrance and in the opposite direction from where most people coming in would be heading towards.

It was a quiet afternoon for that particular crew. Richard was over at one end having them fix his glasses–he’d sat on his in solidarity or something like that–and I was at the other with a patient man who sighed in spite of himself as he got out the tiny screwdriver and simply took the whole thing apart and slowly put it back together again, testing the straightness again and again. It was a chore and it took awhile but at least no one else was waiting.

Then a mom and a teenage boy walked towards me. Hispanic. His jeans were stylishly tight–the problem being that they were apparently not comfortable. He tugged at them in a place you don’t tug in public and his eye caught mine right then.

I instantly flashed back to a man about eight years ago who’d nailed my white privilege surprise when he told me he’d grown up in that neighborhood and that if any Hispanic kids like him wandered into the town next door the cops would be all over them. And were.

For just walking around?! Or driving on a public road?!

Oh yes. He was gratified that I was so horrified but he wasn’t surprised that I never would have guessed.

That Costco is in an industrial area surrounded by one of the poorer neighborhoods around, which in turn borders what is often listed as the richest zip code in the country. Tech CEOs live there, well-paid sports figures. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. The current CEO of Apple. The kicker is that part of that is because the lots are big, and the lots are big because a hundred years ago they had to be for the leach fields because that town couldn’t afford to create a sewer system. Hah. Look at it now.

So. This kid sees me seeing him at the most embarrassing moment and he instantly puts on his best defiant rough tough swagger face, trying to look nobody-messes-with-me.

He was no match for someone who’d raised four teenagers who’d towered over me.

Deflection. Standard tactic. I gestured towards the huge boxes about the size of a subcompact car stacked in big pallets with the third group all the way up to the rafters and said with a smile, I wouldn’t want to be near those in an earthquake.

Totally threw him. What? He looked where I was pointing. I said it again. His eyes went big. He suddenly went total little kid, you know, that sense of oh wow! discovery when you think of something you’ve never thought of before–he had to tell his mom, and when he did, the warmth in her smile would melt anyone.

I was not what he’d thought I would be. He was not what some would make him out to be.

They walked off just as Richard was done and came over to me. My optician offered me my glasses back. I thanked him and put them on. Richard helpfully grabbed their little stand mirror so I could see how I looked and I mimicked my best supermodel self to it a moment and grinned, Now all I need is a haircut.

The optician, who till then had looked so tired, guffawed and said Well maybe we can find some scissors around here, making as if to search over here and over there. He was smiling as we left.

We are all in this life thing together. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s not every day you read a story in the Washington Post about a protest at a town hall meeting and suddenly, while scrolling down, realize the person holding the poster in that picture is your best friend from high school.

Go Karen!!

But then, being a person who was willing to stand up without hesitation for what she knew to be right is why we became close in the first place all those years ago. And still are.

There were five two-hour sessions of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints this past weekend, all of them watched from home.

Which means I could knit.

And boy did I have something I wanted to knit. I’d spent all week sure I had a particular yarn but completely unable to find it, not in the place it was supposed to be and not in the places it wasn’t supposed to be and I just couldn’t knit anything else till I’d gotten it out of my head and made real on my needles. Which wasn’t happening.

Till Friday night. At which point the little hide-and-seeker jumped out yelling PEEKABOO! It had fallen behind. I cast on and did the first row to get the chore part of it done so that in the morning it would just be the good part.

Because.

Sunday a week ago, they’d decided at church that with new people moving in, people needed to get to know each other. So they’d set up chairs in circles of about a dozen and handed everybody a sheet of paper with a list of questions to ask each other. There were two sets.

I groaned to myself because this is the kind of thing where it’s all white noise to me. Lots of people in the room talking at once means that the weak-to-me higher pitches of the consonants are obliterated by the decibel level of the rest.

Hmm. How’s that battery…not too bad… I pulled up the app on my phone and asked Haylee next to me if she’d be willing and explained how to use it: for it to pick up what you say, it can do it in this noisy environment but you have to put it right to your face and you have to keep this button pressed while you talk.

I didn’t say, and if you let go of the button and then push it again it erases everything.

I had become a tad reluctant to ask people to use it. They don’t get it. They let go of the button. They hold the phone at the distance they want to. It stares back at them with its initial little prompt unchanged and then they think it doesn’t work.

Haylee, whom I barely know, immediately grokked the whole thing–and not only how to use the app but how the situation was for me. She not only used it to help me hear her, she used it to tell me what everybody else in the group was saying, repeating softly rightupclosetoit.

I took careful note of the colors in the pattern on her skirt. I knew I had that in Rios. I had just finished the afghan and I couldn’t wait to do this next.

Five days. But finally I found it.

So: Conference. (Which had given me a week’s grace period on this.) GO!

I cast off during the last session.

Even the ends are run in now.

Note to myself, and anyone else potentially following this later should know that I am an exceedingly loose knitter: 90 st, US 6, two half-repeats of 10-stitch fern lace, then an M1 in the single stitch dividing them, two more half-repeats, another M1 and then continue from there. Probably should have done it again and taken it from 1 to 4, but it was all a doodle anyway. Maybe next time. I just didn’t want to make it floppy-wide at the bottom, but I don’t think I needed to worry.

It sits in ever-larger folds down the front, not too tight at the bottom nor too loose at the top and I really really like how it came out. I cannot wait to surprise her with it.

She laughed and laughed when I told her I’d set a timer for heading out and the gadget had heard wrong and apparently thought I was going to a farmer’s market: it displayed a tall basket of vegetables with the kale on top in the place of honor. Go see kale! Huzzah! Music and tossing veggies at the bell!

Because Gail is moving away and found herself with a party thrown in her honor. Several men lifted her wheelchair up the two steps to the door. She doesn’t weigh much anymore.

I finally got to meet her daughter who’d knitted her that gorgeous top-down sweater with the lace-leaf yoke–and Gail was wearing it tonight. Ruth’s sweater was gorgeous, too, and when she found out I was a knitter too we were instant friends.

The resident dog, a spaniel, walked through the crowd with a gentle wag of its tail but not eager to pick out one stranger from many for it to pay attention to.

Richard brought her a plate of strawberries per her request.

Gail lost her husband decades ago (to a terrible medical mistake that should never have happened) and I found myself saying to Ruth, I remember your dad.

That’s all I needed to say. She was so grateful.

Her mom, about the age of my own, will now be in walking distance so she can keep a good eye on her care rather than from a two hour flight away.

It was so good to see them and to get a chance to say goodbye. I snapped a picture.

And looked at it. And showed it to Gail. And then offered a do-over and she laughed and laughed again because that’s Gail and said thank you and meant it and yes please let’s and leaned back towards Aly and we got her a better send-off that time.

My phone number’s going to be the same, she made sure I knew.

My email’s on the card I wrote, I told her.

A hug and then another for safekeeping and Richard and I stepped away into the night, knowing just how badly we were going to miss her.

I was standing just past the top of the stairs at the entrance to the museum, chatting with the security guard. I was waiting for my friend Jean: the last time I’d seen her, we were in high school.

He told me about meeting up with old friends from high school; some you do, some, it just never seems to happen, but the friends you made are friends forever.

I very much agreed  with that last part.

Then he said he’d graduated five years ago. I smiled and told him, I’m 66.

And wondered out loud if I would recognize her. I’d given her a description of what I was wearing just in case, but that was all silliness because of course the moment we saw each other I exclaimed to the guard, There she is!

The smile on his face for us was as big as our own.

Her brother was with her and he toured the museum while we found a cozy spot and caught up on things. There was nobody else in that room but the echoes of our words and our memories.

Favorite teachers. Classmates gone now, ones still here, who had I seen, whom had she seen. Katherine: yes! Both of us got to see Katherine, one of the most fearless people I know, a USAID worker willing to go into any country any time.

Who thankfully was stateside visiting her mom when that entity got broadsided by a proverbial Cybertruck with no brakes, but anyway.

Such a good time. We took pictures. We stood in front of a sculpture in bright yellow of two letters: depending on which side you stood, they cheerfully called out, YO! Or… oy.

Needs a J, I said, as her brother raised his camera.

The first talk at church today was by a young man whose American family had lived in Eastern Europe for part of his childhood.

He was talking about the life of Jesus.

How his parents had fled their country under the violence of an edict to kill all baby boys under the age of two. How, when that leader died, they had at last returned home to their own country.

But how much did he ever really feel it was, and how much did the people there ever regard him as theirs, and as the speaker said that I suddenly saw how he could see that question in a way the rest of us would not have. Then he asked: Wouldn’t that have made it easier for him to willingly thwart oppressive leaders himself.

I had never thought of that.

The second speaker, someone I’ve known for years, kind of interrupted herself to make an aside re something that had been weighing heavily on her: how people–good people–people she’d loved and known and respected–had come to show a, a, (she searched for words, not wanting to tear down and knowing that people only truly change when they feel loved, not dissed) a… mean streak… that was so unexpected.

She said it near tears with so much love for them, in pain and wanting better for them, that they could not have denied the gift her words were offering them. There was a way out from that.

She is a lawyer and loves the rule of law and holding all people equal before God and man.

There were a very few in that audience who needed to hear that message and many more who were intensely relieved to hear Love Thy Neighbor given voice and attention. Intention. Towards all.

Because if we don’t have that what is left to us? But we do have it, we do, and we must.

(Photos coming.) We decided to make it one last day of yarn-shop hopping for the official Crawl. We might actually pull off a Bingo on our cards that they stamped each time we walked into a new one–and we did.

I packed the snacks. Nina drove. Again. Patterns and all that.

Having wished again and again during the afghan that I hadn’t used up all of this shade or that previously, I had my eye out for the ones I’d wanted to replace.

When we called it a day after Royal Bee, our husbands met up with us on the coast for dinner. They asked us, So: did you buy any yarn? with both of them cracking up, like, oh, no, they would never do such a thing in such a place.

My answer was, it averaged out to a skein per shop. It was fun to find colors I loved in the yarn I wanted–but the point was to spend time with Nina.

She laughed as she was nodding yes to that.

We were at Barbara’s Fishtrap. Nina and I had compared memories of Ivar’s in Seattle so I had to try a small bowl of the clam chowder to see if it was as good as theirs. The answer is, I’d have to try them side by side to tell because Barbara’s was very very very good, too, enough to make it all that I’d want to order the next time. It’s a tie. Best I’ve ever had, both of them.

There were surfers in the famous Mavericks surf whom we passed coming and going, there was the point of land stretching around the cove behind us (if you click on their link and scroll down, we were by that window in the center of the building), and at the top of that hill was a bulbous–

–I said, “Looks like a baby rattle.”

They did a double take at the water tower off in the distance and cracked up.

Edited to add: the note on the sign says, “If you are Grouchy, Sullen, Ornery, Moody, or Just Plain Mean, There is a $20 surcharge for having to put up with you.”

(I have no idea why it’s cropping this, click to see the whole thing. It’ll go sideways, though. Go figure.)

I wound up the last hank of Matisse Blue of that dye lot and then I’m out and we’re done. The seed stitch border will take a chunk of it.

I started a fish over here, some seaweed over there, and (where’s the purple. Found the purple) that should also start about there, and then those will probably be the last of the fish, unless (let’s see how much blue there is left at that point) I start one over there….

Three rows in, suddenly I felt like, nope. Put it all away. Picked up a hat and added a few more inches to it, wanting something where I didn’t have to plan and I didn’t have to envision and I didn’t have to make any decisions, just sit there and knit and think how someone was really going to like a gray hat after this was done and it will be fun to find out who and wouldn’t it be great to actually *finish* something.

I did not finish it.

And I baked snacks. Because tomorrow Nina and I are off doing the Bay Area Yarn Crawl thing again.